Steelheart’s Champions

Background

The Stormcast Eternals are a race of beings who have been plucked from the mortal realm, saved from their final demise as elite warriors and tribesmen by the God-king Sigmar. Once these standout warriors and leaders were about to die fighting the forces of the Chaos Gods, Sigmar would pluck them from the clutches of death on bolts of lightning and take them up into his great city of Azyrheim where they would undergo the process of Reforging.

This Reforging would bring them back to life but they are now bigger, stronger and even more battle-savvy than before. There is one negative effect of the reforging, though, and this is with the toll it takes upon the warrior’s mind. Once reforged, a warrior can never truly die as he/she will always be watched over by the God-king and taken back to Azyrheim to be reforged over and over should he/she fall in battle. The toll this takes is with the mind and the fact that a part of it is lost with every reforging. Memories, desires and emotions are all lost little by little until left with nothing more than a callous fighting machine.

It is this flaw in the reforging process (if you see it as such a thing) that has led to Liberator-Prime Severin Steelheart and his small detachment of Stormcast Eternal Liberators to be in The Mirrored City of Shadespire.

Stories are told of vast treasures consisting of trinkets and artefacts within the city of Shadespire and it is hoped that one of these artefacts could hold the key to correcting the flaw that leaves the Stormcast Eternals in the emotionally reduced state each time.

Severin and his small warband of warriors are there to look for and hopefully, find that artefact.

Playstyle

For me, the Stormcast Eternals of Severin Steelheart are a pretty safe bet for getting a few wins under your belt. I say this because they have an average movement rate of 3 hexes, which is decent and can easily be increased considering how many movement buff cards there are in the game.

Although there are only 3 warriors in the warband, they have 4 wounds each, hit on Smash symbols and defend on Block symbols which are the better symbols in terms of chances of success. Once they do hit an opponent, they pack a hefty amount of damage from their hammers and sword. Angharad Brightshield does slightly less with her damage of two but she makes up for that with an increased chance to hit as she rolls an extra attack dice. This seems fair as it suggests she’s not quite as strong as Severin and Obryn but is more agile in her attacks.

Another good thing about them is that they become Inspired quite easily. All they have to do is roll a critical success or block symbol on a defence dice when being attacked and they’re inspired and even more able to kick ass!

I’ve found that Obryn is the heavy-hitter with his two-handed hammer and with the Knockback ability of his attacks can be great for pushing enemies off objectives and out of a territory, if that’s the kind of deck you’re playing.

Personally, I haven’t had great success with Steelheart’s Champions as an objective capturing warband and so instead just like to charge into the nearest enemies and smash them in the face. To be honest, this works really well and is great fun to do. The most fun I have doing this is when I’m up against Sepulchral Guard. It often happens that I’ll smash a skelly into a thousand pieces only to have it reanimated by the Warden so, guess what, I just get back in its face and smash it again — that’ll be another glory point, please.

Conclusion

I really like the Steelheart’s Champions warband and play them often in my games of Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire. Any warband can be as simple or complex to play as you like, that’s one of the beauties of the game, but I usually just play them as a simple “Smash you in the face” type of warband when I want a change from trying to play strategically with one of the other warbands.

How do you use this warband in your games? Let me know in the comments below, I’m always interested in how people are playing this wonderful game.

I think they’re a great warband to start playing the game with as they only have the 3 characters and each is very resilient and can dish out good damage whilst also having a decent movement rate should you want to out-manoeuvre your opponent and go for objectives.

Even though they’re one of the very first warbands to be released, they’ll not fade away into uselessness as I find armies can do in the larger games of AoS and 40k, simply because of the brilliant design of the game. Just add in some different universal cards and you’re good to go with this bunch of brutish good guys.

Currently, Steelheart’s Champions can only be purchased as part of the Shadespire core set.